hi, wow. your ds7 is smart!
Hi! He's pretty smart. Maybe smarter overall than me, though maybe less driven to learn than I was at the same age. Everything's on a continuum.
may i ask where he was gradewise at 5yrs?
That was his kindergarten year, and I recall afterschooling him some that year because he learned absolutely nothing at school. I do remember that the school did some reading and other assessments, but that those didn't generate grade equivalents. The WJ-III Ach he did that year yielded some grade equivalencies from mid-2nd (writing) up through 5th, but I don't put much stock in those numbers based on conversations with his tester. (I'm not saying he was higher than that, just that I don't think they were fully accurate, especially since the test wasn't mapped to our state standards. From what I've seen, the math here is a grade or so behind what I'd expect in a higher-performing state.)
i had the option of putting him into 1st, which i knew the academic material would be more appropriate, even if not challenging, but i was worried about the social aspect.
That's the problem we've found. I think that the material here is not very challenging at any level, due to a focus on basic proficiency and fact memorization. His acceleration hasn't resulted in providing challenge for him. I don't think the acceleration is necessarily worthless, just that it hasn't borne fruit yet. Our advocacy has finally made the school system notice our son so that they're working on providing real learning opportunities for the first time. And at least he knows we're trying, and he's not as frustrated as he would have been in his originating grade, where he was one of the younger ones to start with.
i want him to stay w/ age peers b/c of his social immaturity (he is very quiet, non-assertive, reserved even) and i want him to continue to gain social confidence this year.
That's not a bad goal. Eventually I think you may face a choice between keeping him with kids his age 100% of the time, or looking at least into subject pullouts or some other arrangement for things like math. What I've come to realize is that I want my son to be taught, and I won't stop trying to accomplish that until it happens. With math, there's just no way to have him sit in a classroom with kids his age and be taught properly. Sure, he could teach himself from books or a computer, or I could teach him at home, but this isn't the same as what the other children get: a classroom environment with an engaged teacher, with whom he can interact.
this is why i am curious regarding your ds7- how does he cope with older kids in his grade level? how did you cope with it? maybe you have something to offer me that would help me to understand challenges posed with that?
He appears to have had no problems. There was one bigger child who physically bullied him a little, but he stuck up for himself.
I have had more of a problem with some of the parents, though most have either not noticed or been very understanding. It's just very hard not to give offense, since everyone wants to see their child as doing well, and even if it's often unspoken I think parents of bright children tend to think of their children as being top performers, due partly to competitiveness but also to hoping for the best opportuntities for their kids.
For example, there's a child in his third grade class this year who is one of the better math students, and was picked for subject acceleration as well-- but just so DS would have a companion going with him to the other class. (I think this is bad from a couple of aspects, personally-- the other child should get what's appropriate
for him, whatever that is, not because of someone else's needs; and if he needed a subject pullout they should have been considering this before.)
This boy was invited to DS's summer birthday party, and his mom came along. I gather that she told my wife that her son had suddenly been picked for a math pullout (almost literally unheard of here before we hit the school), and that she was glad that they had finally noticed he was good at math, but that she didn't know why it was only because some other student needed someone to go with him. My wife made some comments that I think didn't go over perfectly well, revealing that DS was that other child in a clumsy way (she is a sweetheart but can get flustered in the moment), but the point that bothered us later was that this mom shouldn't have been told that that was the reason for her son's pullout. Things didn't improve much when the massive "7" Mylar ballon my wife had bought was unveiled to float above the tables.
but i just couldn't get over how you are sort of same situation but WANTing the acceleration i refused....
You're not alone. There are some recent threads here where this topic has come up. I think it's a perfectly valid choice not to accelerate. Though acceleration can work great, no one can tell in advance whether it will work perfectly for a certain child. Some children don't want acceleration even when they're academically frustrated, and in those cases it's certainly a bad option aside from any developmental concerns.
I think, again, that it's also true that inadequate acceleration doesn't fix the academic mismatch it sets out to resolve. In a perfect situation, with a fully invested school and a child who's a great candidate, accelerated to the proper level and taught at something approaching the right pace, though, I do think that the unavoidable downsides of acceleration are just known evils. Having an advanced child means an academic level / age mismatch with normal children; the only real way to avoid tension in one area or the other would be to find other similar children, but that's not an option for us right now.
